Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the short time allotted to me I would like to make a contribution on the budget. On 6 September 2013 Tony Abbott said, 'no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, no changes to the GST, no cuts to the ABC or the SBS'. That is on the public record. Whenever that has been raised in this chamber or anywhere else, there has not been an answer saying, 'We changed our mind.' The answer is always, 'But there is a budget emergency.'

Let us follow that through. If there were a budget emergency, what action would you take? At Senate estimates it became very clear that the first action the Treasurer and others would take would be to reduce the Australian Taxation Office staff numbers from 21,390 to 19,068 in the next 12 months. 'We have a revenue problem,' in the words of the Treasurer and those opposite, so the first thing they do is take 1,000 or thereabouts tax collectors out of the system. The Second Commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office, Mr Geoff Leeper, said during a committee hearing that 96 per cent of tax comes to the agency voluntarily and that it is the compliance team that spends its time chasing the other four per cent. Here is the rub: Mr Leeper states, 'that is largely where our new policy effort is focused, on high-risk areas', and that is where you are going to get a $6 return for every dollar invested. The rate of return is one to six.

If I were to accept that there is a budget emergency, why would the Treasurer be cutting 1,000 tax collectors? Why would he make it more difficult to collect in the high-risk area where people are not doing the right thing, where people are not declaring and paying? According to Mr Leeper, 96 per cent of Australians pay their tax voluntarily. There is an area where you need to chase the dollars. If there is a budget emergency, why on earth would you cut 1,000 people who have the potential, for every dollar invested in them, to raise $6? Andrew Leigh, the shadow Assistant Treasurer, said in a media release on 15 July 2014:

The Abbott Government’s deep staff cuts at the Australian Tax Office (ATO) will result in a hit to the federal budget, with new evidence revealing every dollar cut from spending on staff will sacrifice up to $6 in unpaid tax.

My office has had considerable interaction with people—probably up to 15,000 phone calls made proactively and reactively—about the budget. So we do have an understanding of the depth of feeling out there in a lot of regional and metropolitan areas about these unfair and unpromised attacks on ordinary Australians. The government say we are sacrificing our children's and grandchildren's future. If that were even remotely the case, why would you would cut tax collectors? Why would you sacrifice the ability to get $6 for every dollar invested? That is not new tax; that is the existing tax regime, which is not being complied with by about four per cent of the population.

Contrast that with the GP tax, a $7 co-payment that would cost Australians $3.5 billion. The most vulnerable Australians would be the ones who would suffer. My office has had countless conversations with ordinary working class Australians who simply see this as a kick in the guts. They know the Hon. Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister of this country, lied when he said 'no new taxes'. At the same time, Tony Abbott is not even collecting the taxes that are out there to collect, because he is cutting 1,000 tax collectors.

If that was not bad enough, he is putting his Paid Parental Leave scheme in place. Do not take my criticism of the Paid Parental Leave scheme; do not rely on this side of the chamber's criticism. You do not have to go far to find the other side of the chamber criticising the Paid Parental Leave scheme. They have put their name to their criticism. Among the names bandied around of those who are not only critical of the scheme but feel so strongly about it that they are willing to cross the floor are Senator Bernardi, Senator Williams, Senator Smith and Senator Ian Macdonald. They join Alex Hawke and others in the lower house who are in open revolt about a $5 billion spend on a PPL scheme in this area of alleged budget emergency. Hang on though, Joe said, 'We'll do that. That's our signature policy. We're going to do that over the top of our own side's opposition. We're going to cut 1,000 tax collectors, forgo the chance of getting $6 in for every $1 spent, and we are going to whack a co-payment on the most vulnerable Australians.' That is fair? Goodness gracious!

We do not have to go too far to find some interesting media commentary. I was intrigued by the contribution from Niki Savva on Insiders on 24 August 2014. I do not know the journalist. I have no doubt that she does a startlingly good job in her field. She has certainly been around a fair while. She said in reference to Senator Cormann:

Mathias I think is doing a very good job, but he's doing 2 and a half jobs at the moment … He's doing as you say Arthur Sinodinos' job, doing his own job as finance minister and half of Joe Hockey's job as treasurer.

She went on to say:

But it's not a very tenable situation, either Joe has to come good and everyone is keeping their fingers crossed on that hoping because if Hockey doesn't come good then they are in all sorts of trouble again and plus they need an assistant treasurer before too long.

We all know that Senator Sinodinos has parked himself on the bench. That has left a bit of a hole, no two ways about that. Here is a commentator that says that Mathias is doing a good job, he's doing 2½ jobs, keep your fingers crossed for the Hon. Joe Hockey to come good. If he can get his gaffe-prone performance back on line, they might be able to prosecute their budget. Someone in this place who has been here a very long time once said to me, 'I can't remember a budget that people were still talking about three weeks after it happened'. This is different. This is 100 days after it has happened and it is red-hot out there in the electorates. People are not going to stop talking about this budget. This is red-hot. It has managed to touch everybody.

Arthur Sinodinos is on the sideline; he has parked himself on the bench. The Hon. Joe Hockey, the Treasurer, has put his foot in his mouth a couple of times and had to withdraw from the front line—he cannot sell his budget and he complains that no-one wants to talk to him and no-one likes him. Senator Cormann has had to step to the front and take up the running. And what do we get from the Prime Minister of this country? The Prime Minister, a man who ceaselessly criticised former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for travelling, in this time of budget emergency has managed to make as many international trips as were undertaken by the person he decried in the first place. So you have a budget emergency and a leadership emergency on the other side. They have one person paddling, one person dragging the boat back and another person flying around in circles. The reality is that you cannot cut tax collectors and punish pensioners and then expect the Australian electorate to say, 'Yep, that sounds fair.'

Amongst all of this debacle there is an issue we have discussed in a number of Senate committees—transfer pricing. This is about the fact that Apple, Google and other global corporations work the world system to their advantage—quite properly and legally at the moment—and avoid paying taxes in countries where they make lots of sales. What have the Taxation Office done in respect of that? I presume we will have to wait till the next round of Senate estimates to confirm this, but my information is that they have made redundant the people they charged with investigating that issue. These are the people that they were asking to give them a policy about getting some tax off these global corporations. Because there is no research and development tax in California in the United States, Apple do their design, research and development there—fair enough; that is legal. There is a 15 per cent company tax rate in Ireland, so Apple have a company over there. They sell their stuff in Australia but whack the proceeds off through the Cayman Islands, so we pay full tote odds and more for our Apple products and they make no tax contribution to Australia. The people at the ATO who were charged with investigating that issue have been made redundant. That is what I have been told by someone close to the issue. So in a budget emergency, the response of those opposite is to get rid of some tax collectors. What on earth is going on?

To go a little bit further into the things that are really driving the electorate, in education the Hon. Tony Abbott is cutting $30 billion out of schools, scrapping the Gonski reforms and abandoning needs-based funding. This is after he said before the election that there would be no cuts to health and no cuts to education. That is not what teachers and educators are saying these changes will mean. What they are saying is that these changes are going to mean that disadvantaged kids in school classrooms will not get the appropriate amount of attention to enable them to have a fulfilling education and contribute properly in their lives. They are saying that these changes that are being brought in are not conducive to good educational outcomes.

As to the co-payment, I spoke to a doctor last Saturday night who runs a very successful GP clinic. He said that the most common question he gets asked is: 'Do I have to pay the seven dollars?' He is reassuring people, as are all of his doctors in that clinic: 'No, you don't have to pay that.' But people are very concerned about it. Senator Macdonald, on the other side, has made it very clear, in print and publicly, that coalition voters are concerned about it.

Let us take this for a comment: Mr Abbott was told yesterday that the budget changes were 'unreasonable, unfair and unacceptable'. Now guess who that came from? The Premier of Victoria, Denis Napthine. That is not from our side; that is from their side. The New South Wales Liberal Premier described the federal budget as 'a kick in the guts'. There is no ambiguity in that comment. The Queensland LNP Premier, Campbell Newman, said: 'We're all in agreement that what the government is up to in relation to health and education is not acceptable.' At least he was polite!

So this goes on and on and on, and when we raise simple issues, like, 'Why are you putting off tax collectors if we are to accept that we need to have some more revenue?' there is no answer. It is, 'It's your fault; you left us a great big pile of debt; you've mortgaged our grandchildren's future'—which we do not accept. We accept that you have to run the country in a proper, prudent fiscal manner. But you do not have to do that by whacking the pensioners, or by hitting the unemployed. Six months with no dole? What are they going to do—starve? (Time expired)